Jervis McEntee Diaries

Monday October 27, 1879

Jervis McEntee Diary Entry, Sunday, October 27, 1879, from the Jervis McEntee papers, 1850-1905, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Awoke with a very bad feeling in my head. Moved the Franklin in the parlor and relaid some of the tiles in the hearth which had become loose. The rest of the day I spent sitting quietly in my chair in front of the fire, reading a part of the time. I read some of dear Gertrudes letters again which she wrote me the last winter she was here and while I was in New York struggling with anxieties and unhappy at being separated from her as she was at being parted from me. How like her dear self are her letters. The simple and artless expression of her loving nature. I felt afresh what a trial it was to her to live apart from me whom she loved so dearly. How could I ever leave her. When I read her dear letters she is still living to me and for the time I lose the sense of her absence, but when I fold them up and put them away that ceaseless longing for her returns and never ceases weighing at my heart. She has been constantly in my thoughts today and thinking of her all earthly interests and pursuits sink out of sight. I am almost alarmed at my indifference to my art, for every thing here at home depends upon me now. Still I hope that after I have been at home a little while I will feel like going to work. Wrote a long letter to Gussie. Jamie came home Saturday from school in capital spirits. He went back by the early train this morning feeling pretty badly.

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